


The Other Shoe

by bravenclaw



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, John Has Trust Issues, John Watson is a Good Parent, John Watson's Childhood, John Watson's past, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Rosie the photojournalist, Sherlock is a Good Parent, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-09-26 13:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17142620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravenclaw/pseuds/bravenclaw
Summary: Rosie is all grown up, and, in the wake of a particularly nasty prom disaster, she asks her father:"How did you find your happy ever after? How did it all begin?"And so John takes his daughter on a trip down Memory Lane, showing her how he learned to trust being happy without waiting for the other shoe to drop.





	1. Story Time

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first ever fanfiction! I've got a fair bit of it written, and I promised to have it out to you today, so here's the first chapter! It will update every week on Mondays, so keep an eye out!  
> Merry Christmas (or else happy Monday!)

Years later, her face a splotchy, mascara-smeared mess, her hair falling in a disheveled tangle from the elegant bun she’d so carefully piled and prodded and pinned earlier in the evening, Rosie would ask him how it all began. Not a man prone to introspection, John Watson gave himself a minute to reflect and discover the answer himself. But, his fingers rubbing comforting circles into the satin fabric at the back of her prom dress, John soon found his words.

“I think it really began at work,” he decided.

“On a case?”

“No, at the surgery.” John acknowledged his daughter’s confusion with a puff of laughter. “Yea, it surprised me too at the time. But, as always, it was something that needed to be pointed out to me, and this was the one thing The Great Sherlock Holmes was never going to say first.”

“Why?” Rosie asked. Brushing a blonde curl out of her face, John made one of those split-second decisions that had served him so well over the years.

“It’s a bit of a long story. Shall we make a proper Story Time out of it?” he hazarded. When Rosie’s eyes lit up and the young woman shot up from her perch on the arm of John’s chair, he knew his gamble paid off. He smiled at the return of her characteristic enthusiasm and pushed himself up as well, the smile souring slightly as his bad knee flared. “Go on up and get cleaned up and out of that dress. I’ll get the tea ready. You need help with the zip?”

“I got it, Dad, thanks! Make the chamomile?”

“Will do, love. I’ll be right up.” He glanced fondly at her retreating back before taking his time moving her sparkly prom heels from the foot of his chair to a less hazardous part of the sitting room and meandering into the kitchen. It was neater these days, the experimental paraphernalia almost entirely absent. The handful of beakers and the like were all dusty and pushed aside, more souvenirs of time gone by than actual instruments of science.

John dawdled at the threshold, storing away the image in the Mind Bungalow he’d loosely constructed. This was likely the last Story Time he’d have with his girl – potentially forever, but definitely for a long time to come. The last time he’d performed the ritual, she’d been twelve. Sick with the flu-turned-ear-infection, his little Rosie had been too miserable to bemoan the childhood tradition, and John had seized the opportunity to comfort them both. When she’d been far smaller – five, six, seven – it had been a nightly plea, to the point where John had run out of stories to tell multiple times and had to resort to second-hand narratives to satiate his daughter’s ravenous desire for fantastical tales.

_ She grew too damn fast _ , John grumbled half-heartedly to himself as he filled the kettle. She was the primary reason he needed his dinky old Mind Bungalow in the first place. Every time he turned his head, she’d shot up another inch or lost another baby tooth or discovered some new way of wrapping the various adults in her life around her finger. Those things – those little victories and failures and milestones – needed to be remembered, cherished. God only knew he’d missed enough at the beginning.

He shook himself out of the well-worn fount of guilt when the kettle whistled. _Step to, Watson_ , he scolded himself. _That's all behind you._

As he poured and steeped and dug out the cream and sugar, John wrestled with the fact that he had to do Story Time at all. When Rosie had left that evening for pre-prom dinner, beautiful and heart-wrenchingly reminiscent of Cinderella, with a careless promise to be home by midnight, John had been well and ready to mourn the passing of his daughter’s childhood in peace and quiet and a couple shots of whiskey. So when the girl herself arrived home in tears just two hours later because some fucknut decided to break up with her  _ at the bloody prom _ , John had been thoroughly unprepared to offer the comfort Rosie had sought. John heaved a deep breath, willing the alcohol to loosen its grip; the tea would do them both some good.

Hence the idea of Story Time. Nostalgia was one hell of a drug, and John was itching for a fix. It was lucky that Rosie seemed to be as well.

John was just a little bit apprehensive going into this particular story. How he’d found his “happily ever after” as Rosie had phrased it earlier. How it all began. She was nearly grown now, and knew that her mother had been an assassin, and that Sherlock had been a drug user, but the worst bits – that Mary shot Sherlock in the chest, that John had blamed and broken and beaten the man within an inch of his life just a little over a year later, the distance and damage that had fractured the bond between them to the breaking point – they had always been danced over and around. So he would need to be very careful in how he told the story of recovery. Although, he considered, she was old enough to know the truth; perhaps she'd even find comfort in the knowledge that John made it to a happy ending after it all went so wrong. Or she'd hate him. One of those.

He flicked out the lights in the kitchen, the sitting room, the lower half of the stairwell, and, balancing the two cups of tea on the long-abandoned Story Time tea tray, climbed the steps to his little girl’s bedroom.

_ Not so little anymore _ , he reminded himself, giving the lamplit room a cursory glance as he entered. The photos of friends and family and pets and landscapes decorated walls that once had seen horse posters and crude and forbidden crayon sketches. A few clothes and the odd shoe lay on the floor, a testament to Rosie’s wardrobe dilemma the day before, and books by the dozen lined the shelves, rather than the toys and dolls (and action figures, during her Superman phase). Her desk was piled with schoolwork and textbooks, except for the raised section where her lamp sat. That was the where her pride-and-joy Nikon was placed carefully to the side, next to the latest copy of the school paper, for which she took pictures. Rosie Watson, the photojournalist. John never would have thought it, even when she practiced taking pictures on the odd corpse growing up (when she tricked Molly into letting her into the morgue), but he was unbelievably proud.

And then there was the girl herself – young woman, really. Her hair was down now, brushed and gleaming gold in gentle curls down just past her shoulders. Her face was clean and shining with excitement, and her earlier sorrow seemed to be postponed for the evening as she lay practically vibrating in her bed. John grinned to himself. Oh, to be seventeen again.

“Ready, love?” he asked her, setting down the tea and settling himself down at the foot of her bed. Downstairs, a door closed softly, likely Mrs. Hudson arriving home from bridge night.

“Ready when you are,” Rosie responded. John took a deep breath, a sip of his tea, and, looking back sixteen years, began.

“Once upon a time, there was a doctor, a daughter, and a detective. This is their story.”


	2. Eliza Hamilton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's story for Rosie begins with a friend from hospital - Eliza Hamilton!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes, yes, I know I'm late, but to make up for it, you're getting two chapters today, so!  
> I probably should have known better than to start a new fanfic right before the whole family would be in one place for the New Year. Sorry :P  
> Anyway, yes, there are OCs now, and I've stumbled over the plot, so there's that. And yes, the OCs are so far named after Hamilton characters, because I have a problem.  
> Still, I hope you like it. Please enjoy!

It had been two months since John had given up his life in Acton – the quiet order of suburbia and the desperate pretense of normality – as a bad job and moved back in with Sherlock at 221B. He had spent what felt like the majority of the first month holding his breath, waiting for something, anything to go wrong.

Still, November and Rosie’s first birthday passed in relative peace, quietly and without mishap. Sure, Rosie started walking and talking practically on the same day, and Mrs. Hudson insisted on baking a birthday cake bigger than Rosie herself, and Mycroft arrived on their doorstep three days later, ignoring Sherlock’s jibes about the aforementioned cake and offering a trust fund for the girl with far too many zeroes at the end for John’s comfort, but no archenemies or ex-wives or long-lost siblings showed up out of the blue to ruin their lives. Between developments with Rosie and the slow awkward transition to working cases with Sherlock again, life was exactly the mix of domesticity and excitement that John craved.

By some odd fluke in the Matrix, December was even easier. John relented to his aching pride less than a week in and found a much-needed job with A&E – flexible hours, decent pay, and, far more importantly, an independent sense of purpose again. (Sherlock had the decency to only sulk for two days about it.) And whatever growing pains weren’t soothed by the return to the working world were smothered by the Christmas season. Decorating the flat, Christmas shopping, and helping Mrs. Hudson with the baking with Rosie (and Sherlock playing Christmas carols in the background) provided enough Christmas cheer to bolster the spirits of everyone at 221. Plus, seeing Mum and Da Holmes (they insisted he call them that within a month of the Sherrinford disaster. “As always, Sherlock was right,” Da Holmes had said. “You’re family now, son.”) once more for the holidays – under more pleasant circumstances than the Magnussen disaster, of course – and watching them dote on his daughter was more of a weight off of his mind than he realized. He’d always assumed that growing up without grandparents would be one more cross for her daughter to bear, but this was one area he was grateful to be wrong about.

But, as one year ended and a new one begun, John forced himself to acknowledge at least one of the elelphants in the room: By far, one of the biggest factors behind John and Rosie’s smooth transition to Baker Street was none other than Sherlock Holmes. When he had helped the detective rebuild 221B, John hadn’t been blind to the fact that Sherlock had chosen baby-safe furniture to replace the old angular tables and cabinets. Nor had he missed the fact that the second John stated his intention to move back in, Sherlock had rented out 221C and relocated the vast bulk of his scientific equipment there. And he definitely had not forgotten the argument about Sherlock moving his bedroom there as well.

“You are not sleeping down there, Sherlock! You’ll catch your death, even if you don’t fill up the place with fumes by Day 2.”

“Well, I hardly see a better option, John. It’s not as if I sleep much anyway, and you can hardly share a room with Rosie indefinitely.”

“First of all, you need your bloody sleep, Sherlock. And kipping on the sofa for days at a time doesn’t count. Second, you’re already putting enough of your life on hold because of our nonsense as it is, I won’t see you sacrificing your room for us.”

“I’m hardly putting my life on hold, John. In case you hadn’t noticed, you and Watson are my life right now. Your nonsense is my nonsense.”

“You are keeping your room, and that is final. We’ll figure all the rest later.” John had felt bad at the time for resorting to his Captain voice; even he was aware that Sherlock had no defenses against it, likely due to his association to the abominable way John had treated him during the god-awful Culverton affair, but John had gone over a little wobbly at the reassertion of the place he and Rosie had in his life. That added to the giddy knowledge that this was the first time they’d bickered in months meant that he’d had to play a little dirty, guilt be damned. It had been too much horrible politeness between them for far too long, so it was nice to regain a little piece of their own brand of normalcy.

From the moment John had mentioned possibly moving back to 221B, Sherlock had been acting thoroughly un-Sherlock-like as far as John was concerned. All of a sudden, the man was courteous, solicitous,  _ polite _ , even. He made John tea, did some of the shopping, and remembered the milk. And while the man’s standard of behavior was never very high to begin with, the leaps he took to accommodate John and Rosie were staggering to John. It wasn’t as though John weren’t grateful for the security of knowing his daughter would grow up in a safe environment, but sometimes… Sometimes he missed the screeching violin waking him up at 3 AM, the giddy rush of “a case, John! There’s not a moment to lose”, the easy banter and comfortable weight of each other’s presence, rather than the gulf of awkward tension that seems to have flooded in between them.

On the other hand, no such barriers existed between Sherlock and Rosie; while they’d had a rough beginning, Rosie had immediately adored Sherlock, and the great high-functioning sociopath himself had adored her right back. While John had never once wondered what Sherlock would be like with a baby, the reality of the situation both surprised him and…didn’t.  It was true that Sherlock approached childcare with all the scientific curiosity and rigor as well as lack of concern for the norm as he did everything else in life, but it was the, for lack of a better word,  _ tenderness _ that shocked him silly. All too often, John would come home with the shopping or from the surgery, only to be brought up short at the sight of Rosie stretched out on top of Sherlock’s chest, both dead to the world, one of the detective’s large hands resting on her back, both of her hands knotted in his shirtfront. Or else they’d be banging pots and pans together, or he’d be reading books about bees far too advanced for her, or toddling about the room together and practicing naming the different objects, and the look of unadulterated love in his eyes would be radiant – at least until he caught John looking, at which point a mask of scientific detachment would come over him. John allowed him the illusion. It was better than acknowledging the pull in his chest with each stolen moment of care. And to think he’d once believed the man had no heart; it was painfully obvious to anyone with eyes and a working brain (and even Anderson, at that) that Rosie held it in her chubby little fingers.

Or, as Mrs. Hudson had phrased it, “She may be your daughter, John, but she is definitely Sherlock’s baby.” And so it was, and so John felt that pull grow stronger each day.

It was something John had grown accustomed to ignoring, but he couldn’t deny, even to himself, that he owed Sherlock the world. He loved him, was in love with him, and he’d have to carry the weight of that unrequited love in his chest every day. He owed the man his silence. He owed Rosie a father who could care for her from then on, and he couldn’t be sure he could be that father if he lost Sherlock. So silence it would be. Silence it would have to be.

Which was why that day in the first days of January shocked the bloody hell out of him.

He’d just gotten back to A&E from winter hols, eating his lunch in the break room and texting both Mrs. Hudson about plans for Sherlock’s birthday and Sherlock about a case he’d been working – barely a six, but after five weeks without anything above a three, the detective was actively chomping at the bit. Between confirming various details with the Hudders, trying to convince Sherlock to wait for him to stake out a crime scene, all while doing his level best to keep Sherlock’s party a surprise, he barely got a few bites of his sandwich in before his new favorite doctor walked in.

“Welcome back, John!” Eliza said. She was a pretty young thing, fresh out of med school and newly engaged. John liked her a fair bit; she was charming, friendly, and hard-working, but also wickedly sarcastic and not easily intimidated by the older, more experienced doctors. She reminded John of himself when he was just starting out in the army, with that same save-the-world gleam in her eyes he’d had. She was quickly growing to be a fast friend, and John greatly appreciated those.

“Good to be back,” he responded warmly. “How was your Christmas?”

“Lovely, just absolutely lovely! Alex brought me my own special Christmas feast when he knew I’d be on break,” she gushed, speaking of her fiance. “My own little ham and mashed potatoes and gravy and one of those special little Christmas puddings my mum only makes for Christmass…It was the best little pick-me-up a girl could ask for.”

“I bet,” he replied, sending a confirmation to Mrs. Hudson on her decision of red velvet cake (“to satisfy his sweet tooth,” she’d said. “Or his love of blood,” he’d joked in response). “You must have been popular around here that day.”

“Oh, no one noticed,” she said. “We were all hands on deck the whole damn day. Too many fools with too much alcohol and too little common sense to go around.”

“I remember how it goes,”John said. And boy, did he. During Sherlock’s two-year absence, he’d worked Christmas both times, and he saw his own fair share of drunkards falling off of things, out of things, or into things. Plus the idiots who always  _ always _ stuck something up a hole it wasn’t meant to go into, or else got into a fistfight at dinner over the last biscuit. “As Sherlock says, nothing is more reliable than human stupidity at Christmastime.”

“I know one thing that’s more reliable,” Eliza said.

“What’s that?”

“You bringing up Sherlock Holmes in a completely unrelated conversation,” she grinned over her thermos of tea. When John glared at her in response, she simply sipped before laughing. “Hey, I think it’s sweet.”

“Alright, that’s enough out of you,” John glowered. If there was one thing he didn’t care for in the young woman, it was her deep and abiding (as well as foolish and bewildering) belief that he and Sherlock were “meant to be”. It didn’t matter how many times he told her that he wasn’t gay, that Sherlock didn’t feel things that way, that he was too busy between raising a nearly-toddler and working cases with Sherlock and making enough money for a living to do so much as think about his love life. She was relentless.

It didn’t help that of those explanations, none of them were fully truthful. It had been a process, but somewhere along the way, John had come to accept himself as he was. That is, bisexual. It didn’t matter, to his mind, that he hadn’t told anyone, nor that he had no plans to. He’d been in love exactly four times in his life, and each and every one of those loves have either died or wouldn’t – couldn’t – return his interest. John was too old now to even think about trying again. He had Rosie, now. He had everything he needed.

(Years later, as he would tell his daughter this part of the story, Rosie would simply roll her eyes. “I know I’m great, Dad, but you were clearly full of it.”

John would laugh at that. “Yes, love, but I didn’t know that at the time.”)

As for Sherlock not feeling things that way, well, he wasn’t  _ sure  _ it was a lie, but he sure as hell wasn’t sure it was true, either. It was clear as day that Sherlock could have any man, woman, or nonbinary individual with any common sense at all. And Irene Adler, well. She didn’t appeal particularly to John (although he couldn’t quite put his finger on why), but he couldn’t deny she was gorgeous, clever,  _ interesting _ . If there was anyone who would make a good match for The Great Sherlock Holmes, it was The Woman.

And as for not thinking about his love life or lack thereof, well. That was just a blatant lie. Although, to be fair, John had been doing his level best to do anything but think about his love life, both for Sherlock’s sake and his. He was a man of action, a man of decision, a man of pride. To be caught out doing something as degrading and useless as  _ pining _ wasn’t just unacceptable. It was entirely out of the question.

(“God, Dad, no wonder everyone says you can’t lie. You can’t even lie to yourself properly!”

“Hush up and listen to the story. I did get better, I’ll remind you.”

“…Marginally.”

“Oi!”)

“How many times do I have to tell you that Sherlock and I are just friends, Eliza?” John asked, rubbing his brow in frustration. He knew the whole engaged thing was probably just giving her a bad case of rose colored glasses, but the whole thing was starting to wear on him a bit.

“As many times as you like, but I can’t say I’ll ever believe it,” the doctor replied. John started to argue, but she cut him off. “Look, maybe friends is all you’ll ever be, and maybe that’s all you’ll ever need from each other, but you can’t deny the facts.”

John sighed. “I can tell I’m going to regret asking, but what, exactly, are the facts?”

Eliza wiggled in her seat and beamed as if she was hoping he’d ask, and yep, he was right. He did regret asking her. “First, you’ve lived together on and off going back seven years now, to the point where you are now both raising your daughter together. Second, your work with him does now and always has taken priority over the work you do here or at any other practice in London. You prefer working with him and being with him whenever possible. You working here just suits your pride more, which hey, I am totally not knocking. If anyone can understand going the extra mile to feel better about yourself, it’s the first doctor in a family of nurses and typists. Third, sometimes you get that silly little grin on your face when you text him like you’re both in bloody secondary school all over again.”

“I do not –!”

“Don’t interrupt,” Eliza cut him off. “Finally, and probably the hardest for you to hear, I didn’t know Mary.” She sighed and shook her head, visibly searching for the right words. “I didn’t know you when you were with Mary. But a couple of people here did, and people talk. And even if I didn’t pay attention to the talk, which I don’t normally, I see how you talk about Mary. You’re always bitter or outright angry when you talk about her, when you think about the time when you were together. But when you talk about Sherlock, when you think about him? Even when he drives you up the wall, or when you think about the bad times, it’s always the same.

“Sherlock Holmes makes you happy.”

And damn, it looked like Eliza was right, too. That was the hardest for him to hear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with any fic, I live and thrive off of feedback, so please leaves kudos, comments, subscribe, blah blah blah, you know the routine ;)  
> If you wanna talk elsewhere, about life or fandom or requests or whatnot, you can find me on Twitter @bravenclaw1

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Kudos and comments keep me warm when the icy winds blow. Find me on Twitter @bravenclaw1 !


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